This invention relates generally to medical imaging systems, and more particularly, to image filtering in medical imaging systems.
Medical imaging systems are used for acquiring medical images of various body parts such as the heart, lungs and the like. For example, medical imaging of the heart may involve acquiring images of the heart in various heart cycles. These images typically include image slabs. The image slabs generally are defined by a group of images acquired at a point of time in the heart cycle. These images are then combined to generate an image of the whole heart. Because the acquired images are discontinuous in time, the combined images have gray scale non-uniformities, also referred to as banding. This banding also may be caused by gaps or mismatches between image slabs when the image slabs are joined together to form an image. Banding is even more prominent when imaging using contrast because contrast distribution is not uniform among various image slabs.
Known methods to reduce banding in medical images include identifying image bands and removing images on the boundary of image slabs that cause image bands. These known methods result in loss of information, which is undesirable.